What will be the next ’street drug’?

[Hyperreal]

The current list of street drugs is really very short: cannabis, cocaine, crack, heroin, speed (amphetamine/ methamphetamine), ecstasy, acid, mushrooms (mostly in America) and ketamine. Other drugs might be found now and then, or exist only in certain scenes, but the above are pretty much the only major street drugs. (By major street drugs, I mean something that is illegal, is bought from drug dealers, and people outside the drug community know of.)


Ecstasy came on to the streets very rapidly in the eighties and has stayed there. Ketamine is the latest one, and is still unheard of on the streets in parts of the world.


My money is on 2C-B. Here's why:


2C-B has been placed on the UN's Convention on Psychotropic Substances, making it illegal worldwide. This means that people will have to buy it from dealers. 2C-B is different in effectsfrom any of the current street drugs. Nearly everyone who tries 2C-B likes it, which is what that Peter Jennings documentary identified as the quality that allowed MDMA to gain such popularity. I think drugs become street drugs based on merit: heroin is the most blissful opiate, MDMA is the most euphoric of the empathogenic stimulants, LSD is (to put it crudely) the best psychedelic etc. 2C-B is, by all accounts, a good drug.


Anyone agree? Disagree? Comments? Meta-comments?